Related News

Downloads

Share

Selected Shop

Jack Smith was born on the 18th June 1928, and died on the 11th
June 2011. Smith had one of the most fascinating careers in the
history of Modern British art. He was a central figure in British
painting from the early 1950s when he was renowned for his powerful
realist works. Along with John Bratby, Edward Middleditch and
Derrick Greaves, Smith is thought of as a key member of the
so-called 'Kitchen Sink' school, a label casually applied by the
critic David Sylvester to suggest a unified group of campaigning
Social Realists.

However, Smith was never comfortable with the tag. His core
concerns were always aesthetic - to do with light, form and pattern
- rather than political, and by the late 50's his work was moving
towards the pure abstraction for which his career has subsequently
been celebrated.

In 1956 he was included in the Venice Biennale and he was given
his first solo retrospective at the Whitechapel in 1959. A second
followed in 1971 by which time his work had become almost entirely
abstract. Many of the paintings had musical titles and used strange
script-like forms which implied, but at the same time denied a
specific semiotic reading.

Smith's work is very much about contradictions. The works
yearn to be read, to be understood, and hence to be heard - yet
their 'music' is purely visual, and emphatically silent. Different
painted languages are deployed to suggest space and gravity, only
for this to be snatched away by an adjacent mark or shape. Smith's
paintings therefore invite, but defy translation. They embody the
paradox of a language which has no meaning, but also of a visual
music which makes no sound.